


Shelter from the Storm

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alien Character(s), Alien Culture, Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Fluff, Families of Choice, Female Friendship, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Injury, Missing Scene, Reunions, Trek Women, Women Being Awesome, cotton candy bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 11:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1302745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaila doesn't believe in no-win scenarios.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shelter from the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for [Cotton Candy Bingo](http://cottoncandy_bingo.dreamwidth.org) Round One, in very belated response to the prompt: _hug_. (It is extremely angsty for a fluff fic, but... consider it hurt/comfort, I guess? Emotionally rather than physically, but still. Yay comfort!)
> 
> I am assuming backstory for Gaila that is consonant with [While We Live](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1432891), which is a stitched-together patchwork of four exploratory not-actually-a-remix fragments about Gaila's childhood and enlistment in Starfleet that I wrote while attempting to remix MelayneSeahawk's [Talented Tongue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/301680).

Gaila knows it's rude to gloat, but how can she not? She's assigned to the _Enterprise_ , the flagship-to-be, Captain Pike's own ship! She turns to Nyota and bounces with pure excitement, feels like anticipation must be discharging from her fingertips and hair like sparks from a badly grounded generator.

Nyota smiles for her, because she knows exactly what Gaila is feeling, and at least one of them won the posting they've both dreamed of. Then they lose each other in the press of moving bodies. It's a little separation, only for a few days, not much more than an extended practical field trip or the way they can each get lost in labwork for a few days until the other comes with reminders of the wider world. Gaila has no doubt they'll laugh and commiserate about favoritism and grudges -- because what other explanation is there for the highest-ranked cadet in the communications track to not be posted to the most coveted ship? Somebody has it in for Nyota. But Gaila doesn't believe in no-win scenarios. They'll find a way around this obstacle before they graduate and get their real assignments.

When they exit warp into a graveyard of ships orbiting Vulcan like a macabre planetary ring, Gaila steadies herself against her console and tries to remember how to breathe.

Her sister is dead, she thinks. Nyota, who saved her from drowning in the alien culture of Terra, who offered openness to a kin-bereft stranger, who taught her nuance and connotation and alien mores and only requested that their room remain _theirs_ instead of a gathering place. Nyota is dead, and she is kin-bereft again.

Then the black ship contacts them and she has no time for thought.

When she surfaces again, breaches the miasma of fear-danger-rage and the pinpoint focus of emergency training, it's in the numb, overcrowded chaos of sickbay. She's sitting in a chair, tunic and undershirt pulled off and wrapped around her shoulders, waiting to be treated for a burn-and-bruise spread all along the left half of her torso. Her skin is wilting around the edges of the wound, gone limp and soggy and far too dark and streaky a green to be healthy.

She's far from the most injured person in the room. And at least she's alive. She sneezes, the rubs her nose against her tunic sleeve. It doesn't help; everything still smells of blood and smoke. All the bodies around her seem half-unreal without scent to anchor her sense of their location and emotions. Even her own injury seems almost like a very accurate stage makeup job, though the pain makes a convincing case for reality.

She wonders if she might be hallucinating. Maybe this is all a terrible dream. Maybe it's a creepy, telepathic version of the _Kobayashi Maru_. Maybe this is her punishment for helping Jim cheat to prove his point.

Or maybe this is real.

She's overcome horrors before. But she's never had to face them alone.

She doesn't like thinking. She wants to go back to the no-mind rush of crisis, or convince one of the doctors and nurses to knock her out until the world goes back to something she can deal with.

Gaila twists to see how many people are left between her and treatment, and winces as the motion pulls against her burn.

"You smell like burning grass," a strangely familiar voice says.

Gaila turns back, looks up, sees Nyota -- impossibly unharmed, and just as scent-muffled as everything has been since her console exploded in a reeking, sparking electrical fire.

Gaila was in charge of the team scanning the debris for escape pods or life signs in sealed compartments. She knows exactly how many major pieces the _Farragut_ broke into. She knows exactly how many life signs they found in its wreckage. The numbers are twenty-eight and zero, respectively.

She decides she must be hallucinating after all.

"I'm so sorry," she says. "We grabbed as many survivors as we could find, but the _Farragut_ must have arrived first, and been hit dead-center, and there was so much interference that by the time we were in transporter range--"

Nyota kneels in front of Gaila's chair, wraps her hands over Gaila's own hands, which are clutched tight against her elbows, pinning her arms across her wounded torso so she won't touch and make it worse.

"I wasn't on the _Farragut_. I convinced Spock that assigning me away from his own ship to avoid the appearance of partiality was illogical. I was going to find you once we reached Vulcan," Nyota says. "Then Kirk dragged me to the bridge with his crazy theory about-- about Romulans and black ships and the _Kelvin_." Her hands tighten, almost to the point of pain. "If you hadn't brought him back to our room, if he hadn't overheard me telling you about that transmission from Klingon space..."

She trails off, swallows, looks away and down.

Gaila leans forward despite the stabbing, throbbing pain in her side, until her forehead touches the crown of Nyota's head and her hair falls like a tangled curtain around them.

"You're alive," she says.

"So many aren't," Nyota says.

"Yeah." Gaila remembers the way the ship shuddered like a living thing, bucking and writhing in pain. She remembers the pressure shield dropping down across the corridor as she tried to haul one of her injured crewmates toward the auxiliary sickbay on engineering deck, remembers her horrifed realization that if she'd been even thirty seconds faster, both of them would be dying of asphyxiation, if not sucked right out of the ship into the endless, soundless black of space. She remembers years earlier, different pressure shields -- Orion design, they slid out from left and right rather than down from above -- and how they'd cut off parts of the ship in which her House had escaped Orion Prime, remembers losing a tenth of her family as the price for freedom.

But a House is woven of many lives, and House Amet survived. A Starfleet ship is equally made of many limbs and many roots, and the _Enterprise_ survived as well. Gaila's Starfleet in-net is tiny, only a handful of aliens she's found whom she trusts enough to name sister and brother, but here is one alive, touching her skin to skin, breathing with her, the same air mingling in their lungs.

"So many died," she agrees. "But we didn't. And we won't let this price have been for nothing."

Nyota's hands clench, then relax, slide down to rest on Gaila's thighs, on the scorched and filthy fabric of her uniform trousers. "Yeah," she says. She tilts her head up, meets Gaila's eyes, so close Gaila can see her pupils blown huge and dark in the shadows cast between them. "We couldn't save the fleet. We couldn't save Vulcan. But it stops here."

"You said Jim dragged you to the bridge. He's still acting First Officer, right? Are you part of the bridge crew now?"

Nyota nods.

"I might be the second-highest ranking person left in Engineering, when I get out of here," Gaila says. "Whatever you need up there, tell me. I'll make it happen."

"I need you to stay alive," Nyota says.

Gaila lets go of her elbows, presses her hands to Nyota's bare arms, wraps her fingers around undamaged alien skin. "I promise. You promise too."

She has lost too many homes and families. She refuses to lose another.

"We will survive," Nyota says.

She stands, taking hold of Gaila's hands as she rises, and pulls Gaila to her feet, steadies her as she sways at the pain of sudden motion. "More than survive. We're going to _win_ , and then we're going to _live_."

Gaila throws her arms around her sister and pulls her into a hug, heedless of blood and smoke and pain. Nyota clings back, equally fierce. They smell of blood and smoke and pain and desperation, and none of it matters because they are alive, they are together, and there is no such thing as a no-win scenario.


End file.
